"It will be a great pleasure to be with him, as it
always is."
(Jane Austen to her sister, Cassandra, 3 November, 1813.)1

If
thanks for Jane Austen's works be owed to anyone but the author herself, they
are owed to her favorite brother, Henry.Living
in London during her most productive years, he served as her literary adviser
and was, to a far larger extent than is generally known, responsible for the
appearance of all six novels.In the "Notice" he prefixed to the posthumous
publication of her last two works, Henry furnished the only biographical
material that was to be made available for more than 50 years after his sister's
death.

Henry Thomas Austen, the fourth son of George and Cassandra, was born in Steventon in
June, 1771.In a letter written
shortly after Jane's birth four years later, George Austen accurately predicted
the closeness that was to develop between Jane and Henry: "She is to be
Jenny, and seems to me as if she would be as like Henry, as Cassy is to Neddy."2

Like
all the Austen children, Henry benefited from an early and superior education at
home.As a child, he translated
Horace and participated in the private family theatricals.In 1788 he matriculated at St. John's College, Oxford, and
while there contributed nine essays to the weekly periodical, The Loiterer (1789-90) which had been founded by his older brother
James.

Henry's
writings lack the witty genius of his sister's contemporary Juvenilia3
but are only slightly less amusing.Most
can be taken as homilies, early indicators of his eventual clerical profession:
an apologia for a wasted life; criticism of the abuse of heraldry; half-hearted
support for the theories of education promulgated by Rousseau and Mme. de Genlis;
advice to the victims of husband-seekers; the folly of relying on first
impressions; the results of marriage for pecuniary interests.4

In
1787 Henry spent a month with his cousin Eliza Hancock (who had married the
Comte de Feuillide) at her residence in Orchard Street, London.The following year she visited James and Henry at Oxford and, in a letter
to her cousin Philadelphia Walter, remarked on Henry's handsome appearance and
called him "tonish."5After her husband was guillotined in 1794 Eliza stayed with
the Austens in Steventon and, consciously or unconsciously, began to woo both
brothers simultaneously.Henry
eventually won her hand even though he was ten years her junior.His success was probably helped along by two factors: James had only
recently become a widower and, much more abhorrent to the liberated Eliza, was a
clergyman.The ceremony took place
at Marylebone Church in London, 31 December, 1797.The fact that the wedding did not occur at Steventon may indicate that
the family viewed the marriage as less than felicitous.

Henry
had received his Masters Degree from Oxford the previous year and had joined the
Oxford Militia, rising to the ranks of lieutenant, adjutant, and captain before
resigning his commission in 1801.During
the short-lived period of peace provided by the Treaty of Amiens (1802), Henry
and his wife visited France in a vain attempt to recoup Eliza's losses at the
Comte's estate in Guienne.All too
soon the truce ended and they were forced to flee the country.Thanks to Eliza's command of the French language, they escaped with their
lives.

In
1803 and 1804 Henry and Eliza joined his parents and sisters, who were at that
time living in Bath, for holidays at Lyme Regis.In January of 1805 the Reverend George Austen died, leaving his wife and
two daughters in dire financial straits.Just
starting in the banking business, Henry contributed £50 a year to their support
and claimed he would "do as much as long as [his] precarious income
remains."6 Later his
mother confessed, in a letter written in 1820 to her sister-in-law Jane Leigh-Perrot,
that this amount had been withdrawn by her son after his bankruptcy in 1816.7

Henry
and two associates had founded a banking institution in London sometime between
1804 and 1806.Austen, Maunde and
Tilson of Covent Garden flourished and enabled Henry and Eliza to move from
Brompton (where Jane Austen had found the quarters cramped during a visit in
1808) to a more fashionable address and larger house at 64 Sloane Street.Jane's visits here in 1811 and 1813 were happy events, filled with
parties, theatre-going, and the business of publishing Sense and Sensibility and Prideand Prejudice.

1813
brought both good fortune and tragic loss.Uncle Leigh Perrot and his brother, Edward (Austen) Knight, helped to
secure Henry's appointment as Receiver-General for Oxfordshire.His happiness was marred, however, by Eliza's death after a painfully
debilitating illness.Henry soon moved to quarters over the bank at 10 Henrietta
Street and, later, back to Chelsea, 23 Hans Place.

Jane
was entertained at both establishments.In
1815, on her visit to Hans Place during negotiations for new editions of her
first three novels and the publication of Emma,
Henry became seriously ill.Fortunately,
he recovered; it was through a connection of his attending apothecary that Jane
was invited to visit the Prince Regent's library.She did so somewhat reluctantly but later dedicated Emma
to the Prince.

After
Waterloo (1815) England's economy was depressed and Henry's bank was forced into
bankruptcy.Henry's last task
before leaving London was to buy back the manuscript of "Catherine" (Northanger
Abbey) from the publisher, Crosby, to whom he had sold it in 1803.Crosby obviously did not realize that the anonymous "Lady"
author was the woman who had written Pride
and Prejudice.

Henry's
third and final career began in December, 1816, when he took oders at Winchester
or Salisbury (the exact place is uncertain).Jane lived long enough to hear him preach at the village church in
Chawton.She had always considered
him an eloquent speaker and now informed a nephew that he wrote "very
superior sermons."8

Jane's
favorite brother and the member of the family who had had the most influence in
furthering her literary ambitions was in constant attendance throughout the
final two months of her illness in 1817.He,
Cassandra, and Henry’deceased wife's confidential secretary, Mme.Bigeon, were the only names mentioned in Jane Austen's will.

Late
in 1817, Henry arranged for the publication of Northanger
Abbey and Persuasion and
introduced the four volumes with his "Biographical Notice of the
Author."Elizabeth Jenkins, in
her comprehensive biography of Jane Austen, gives a good description of Henry's
style:

His
naturally solemn manner of writing, the fact that the essay was itself an elegy,
and that the convention of the time prevented his putting before the public that
sort of intimate portrait which, in conversation, no one could have given so
well as he, have made his description of so dated a nature, that only the
extreme interest of the subject makes it possible for us to read it with any
degree of intelligent participation.9

This is an accurate appraisal.Nevertheless, the "Notice" gave the reading public the only
biographical information on Jane Austen that it was to have until the
publication of a memoir, in 1870, by her nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh.

During
the next few years Henry served as Curate at Chawton, Chaplain to the British
Embassy at Berlin,10 and
as Rector of Steventon until his nephew, William Knight, was qualified to accept
that living.In 1822 Henry was
licensed to the cure of Farnham and, two years later, he was appointed Perpetual
Curate at Bentley.From 1823-27
Henry also served as Master of the Free Grammar School in Farnham.While at Bentley he was only six miles from his mother and
sister, Cassandra, at Chawton and either lived with them, or made frequent, long
visits, until Mrs. Austen's death in 1827.

Henry
had remarried in 1820.His wife was
Eleanor Jackson, a long-standing acquaintance of the family.Cassandra considered her "an excellent wife" but noted that she
suffered from poor health.11

Despite
his resourcefulness and many occupations and preoccupations, Henry never
rebounded financially from his losses in 1816.Debts of £800 and £400 are mentioned in letters to his nephew, James
Edward, in 1828 and 1832.In the
latter year he and Cassandra sold, to Richard Bentley, the copyright of Jane's
five novels (the firm already owned the rights to the sixth) for £250"& two copies of the work."12The
famous "Bentley Editions" were published in 1832-33 and the works were
made available to an ever-increasing readership for the first time since their
original publication.

Henry's
retirement in 1839 was rendered at least partially possible by the legacy he
received after the death of his aunt, Mrs. Leigh-Perrot.He afterwards spent some time in France (for his wife's health?) and died
of gastritis, in 1850, at Tunbridge Wells.He is buried there in Woodbury Park Cemetery.

He
was the handsomest of his family and, in the opinion of his own father, also the
most talented.There were others
who formed a different estimate, and considered his abilities greater in show
than in reality; but for the most part he was greatly admired.Brilliant in conversation he was, and, like his father, blessed with a
hopefulness of temper which in adapting itself to all circumstances, even the
most adverse, seemed to create a perpetual sunshine.The race, however, is not all to the swift; it never has been, and though
so highly gifted by nature, my uncle was not prosperous in life.13

14Charades,
Written a Hundred Years Ago by lane Austen and Her Family
(London: Spottiswoode & Co., 1895), p. 24.H.A.'s contribution to the slim volume is headed "XV." The
solution: "Patriot."

CONTRIBUTOR

J.
David Grey

[1935-1993]

J. David Grey has taught in East Harlem since 1962 and has served as an
Assistant Principal since 1975.He
reread Jane Austen after a visit to Chawton in 1967 and shortly afterwards began
doing research on the author.As a
result of acquaintances he made during the 1975 bicentenary festivities in
England, Canada and New York, he co-founded The Jane Austen Society of North
America in 1979 and served as its first President until 1982.He is currently editing a Jane
Austen Handbook, which will appear in 1985.He continues to be the unofficial archivist of the Society.